Are wedding photos on social networks unoriginal and lame? Depends where you look

David Murray, from Georgia, placed 7th in the “Ceremony” category of the Wedding Photojournalist Association 2012 Q2 contest, with this intimate shot. The contest judge commented: “It’s hard not to fall in love this couple; their joyful radiance is written all over their bodies. I love that the audience is obscured, accentuating a private moment in front of so many. Furthermore the pews create a lead into the image that lands our eyes directly upon this couple.”

MacDonald’s age might have something to do with his frequent encounters with the wedding photo genre. The average Canadian bride is about 31.5 years old, while grooms are about 34. Judging from his photo, I would guess that MacDonald falls quite squarely into this happy demographic. So would lots of his Facebook friends.

But MacDonald has a point. Wedding photos are often repetitive and contrived. And yet we proudly share them on the Web, hang them on our walls and carry them around in wallets. Is there something wrong with this picture?

The field of wedding photography has come a long, long way from its stodgy beginnings. The British website, The Wedding Photo Secret, shows how the first wedding photos were severely constrained by limited technology of the day. By today’s standards the shots could hardly be considered more dull. And they looked very similar to each other.

This collection of old wedding photos on The Wedding Secret websites illustrates one of the truisms of the early form: no formal wedding dresses. Note that in each photo, the woman literally stands behind her man, usually with her hand resting on his shoulder.

The inventions of flashbulbs, film technology, and lighter equipment gave photographers greater mobility and flexibility. Wedding photography took hold as a cultural product and staple of marriage ceremonies. Searching “wedding photography” in the Calgary Yellow Pages, I found about 47 companies providing the service today.

Wedding photography relies on certain pre-established conventions associated with the genre, such as the shot of the wedding ceremony, tossing the bouquet, or cutting the cake. A genre implies a reliable set of characteristics for consumers, along with a convenient way of focusing and organizing materials for the professional photographer.

The problem with a genre, across all art forms, is that it can lead to mechanical repetition, write Louis Giannette and Jim Leach in Understanding Movies (p. 215). “Genre conventions are mere clichés unless they’re united with significant innovations in style or subject matter,” they write. “The most critically admired genre films strike a balance between the form’s pre-established conventions and the artist’s unique contributions.”

In photography, as in movies, genres help guide the user experience. Wikipedia describes two long-established and two emerging approaches to wedding photography. In the traditionalapproach, the photographer controls the scene and takes classic genre shots. The photojournalisticapproach, my personal favourite, emphasizes candid shots over posed ones. The fashionapproach combines the first two, but also includes photography inspired by famous fashion magazines, along with value-adding treatments to the images themselves. A fourth style is wedding studio photography, which combines glamour photography, a studio, and frequent changes in outfits, makeup, hairdo and backdrop.

Marianne Earthy of London won first place in the 2012 Q2 Toasting/Speeches category of the Wedding Photojournalist Association contest, with this shot. Said the judge: “Fun divide between the worlds of the adults and the children. Great moment. It may be a common scene at weddings, but it isn’t a common image. It’s set apart from the others via the juxtaposition of the devil-may-care scene taking place on the floor with the seriousness of the speaker and the almost solemn uniformity of the head table. But never discount finding the moment within a scene like this. When combined with good execution of photographic skill, the moment always sets an image apart.”

High-end photographers don’t have the market cornered on noteworthy wedding shots. By accident or by design, point-and-shoot amateurs like you and me sometimes capture a truly memorable moment – not technically outstanding, perhaps, but valuable all the same. Reassuringly, the cultural scholar Raymond Williams, in his 1961 book, The Long Revolution, says art need not always be cutting-edge to successfully communicate meaning. Williams writes: “In many societies it has been the function of art to embody what we can call the common meanings of the society. The artist is not describing new experiences, but embodying known experiences.

“There is a great danger in the assumption that art serves only on the frontiers of knowledge,” Williams writes. “It serves on these frontiers, particularly in disturbed and rapidly changing societies. Yet it serves, also, at the very centre of societies. It is often through the art that the society expresses its sense of being a society. The artist, in this case, is not the lonely explorer, but the voice of the community.”

So we proudly share our technically average wedding photos on social networks. The world of word-of-mouth is where we get most of our information about each other. Another scholar who explores the value of everyday, as opposed to professional, forms of communication is sociologist Herbert J. Gans. He believes most people usually spend more time with the “news” they get from informal networks – over the picket fence, around the water cooler, in instant messages, or via video sites – than they do from professional sources.

Gans describes the folks who contribute to less formal news networks as “everyday newsworkers,” or ENs, in his article, “Everyday News, Newsworkers, and Professional Journalism,”He writes: “ENs cover the informally organized parts of society, the ‘private’ worlds of family, friends, compatible neighbours, work colleagues, and the like as well as the informal networks, cliques, and clubs in which they come together.”

So if you’re seeing a stream of artistically average wedding photos in your social network, the grapevine is alive and well. You’re probably more interested in the experience represented by the images, anyway, rather than the photographer’s ability to make a personal artistic statement. If you’re looking for originality in wedding photography, social networks may not be the best source.

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